


Mail Call

by sanguinity



Series: The Hornblowers' To Command [3]
Category: Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: Cuckolding, Custody Arrangements, Gen, Polyamory, Pregnancy, and its consequences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27065620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/pseuds/sanguinity
Summary: Maria writes with joyous news.
Relationships: Horatio Hornblower/Maria Mason, William Bush/Maria Mason
Series: The Hornblowers' To Command [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1416214
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Mail Call

**Author's Note:**

> There are two previous stories in this series that are hidden from people without AO3 logins; this story might not make much sense without them. In short, for reasons we don't need to go into here, there is a standing arrangement where Bush has been sleeping with both Hornblowers, in both cases at their spouse's invitation.

"Come," Hornblower called, and Bush let himself into the aft cabin. "I hope I didn't call you away from anything pressing?" Hornblower asked, without looking up from the letter in his hand.

"No, sir." Bush had distributed the remainder of the mail to the officers to distribute to their divisions, but beyond opening Anne's most recent letter and confirming that all was well at home — Anne was the most likely of his sisters to write plainly and directly — Bush was saving his own mail for first watch and a quiet glass of sherry, should the pitiless gods of the sea permit him the luxury of the time. "Just reorganising the watch bills, sir. Orrock suggested Lane as a prospect for the tops. After King's loss and Pertwee's rupture we need to train up some new topmen."

"Just so," Hornblower said, and Bush thought Hornblower seemed distracted. Perhaps even agitated. "Shut the door, if you please."

Bush did so. "Is Mrs Hornblower well, sir?"

Startlement passed over Hornblower's face. But it was an easy guess for Bush to make, given the feminine hand and lack of official seals on the letter Hornblower held. Discomfiture closely followed Hornblower's startlement. "Did she not write you herself?"

"No, sir," Bush said, reproach in his voice. However tender his private feelings for Maria were — and whatever improprieties his captain invited him to engage in ashore with them both — he would never presume to enter into correspondence with his captain's wife.

"Then it falls to me." Hornblower refolded the letter and laid it aside — Bush had the impression of a man covering for his own nervousness. "Congratulations, Bush. You're to be a father."

Bush was aware that the utterance should have made sense, and yet it did not.

"You needn't worry, I'll raise the child as my own, of course. No one but us three need— Bush! Come, take this chair."

The _Hotspur_ had jumped abominably just then, sending Bush lurching into the bulkhead. Now Hornblower was at his elbow, guiding him into the cabin's only chair. Bush weakly protested — he should not be sitting while his captain stood — but Hornblower bullied him into it anyway. He knelt down and clasped Bush's slack hands, looking into his face.

"I…?" Bush asked, the enormity of Hornblower's announcement too great to voice.

"Yes, you," Hornblower said testily. "You don't imagine Maria has been cuckolding us, do you?"

That _us_ was too great to look at directly. "She's your wife," Bush protested.

"Which is why I'll claim the child as my own," Hornblower said slowly, as if speaking to a simpleton. Perhaps Hornblower was; Bush had never been known for his perspicacity. "I would never dream of punishing a child for his parentage, let alone my own failings." He suddenly paled. "Oh, good lord, say you don't—" Hornblower set his jaw and looked down, before searching Bush's face. "If you and Maria wish to raise the child together…"

Bush all but physically recoiled from the suggestion. "She's your _wife,_ sir," he protested, utterly scandalised.

"I know," Hornblower said, looking as if he were in pain. "I wouldn't be able to protect you — either of you. Your career would be ruined. It'd do my career no good either, for that matter. I'd be the laughingstock of the fleet. But if you and Maria want a life together…"

"No, sir. _No._ " Bush could not express the depth of his antipathy for that suggestion. But then the grim thought occurred to him. "But if you turn Maria out, of course I'll—"

"No, good God, no!" Now it was Hornblower's turn to be scandalised. He stood, paced the two short steps to the door before abruptly running out of space. He turned on his heel, but there was nowhere to go but the short step back to the desk. "I would never…! _No._ Even if I hadn't proposed the arrangement in the first place, Maria must never suffer for my errors."

On that point, Bush was in sympathy with his captain: whatever mistakes Bush himself had made, Maria must not be allowed to suffer for them.

"So we are agreed?" Hornblower asked. "I raise the child as mine?"

"Yes, sir. If that's satisfactory to you, sir," Bush said and had the sensation of having had a cannonball pass close by. But sometimes men dropped dead of even that, the wind of a passing cannonball that never touched them itself.

Hornblower exhaled in relief, as if it was Bush who were doing the favour for Hornblower. "Hell and damnation, man, I thought…" He went to his desk and poured a generous measure of rum, and handed it off to Bush. Hornblower's hand trembled, barely noticeable if not for its effect on the rum in the glass, and Bush wondered if Hornblower had felt that cannonball, too.

Bush tipped his head back and drank off his glass in two long swallows.

"Is she so certain it's mine, sir?" he asked.

Hornblower glanced at him, startled, then coloured fiercely. Bush instantly regretted the question.

Hornblower looked straight ahead, his shoulders set and unhappy. "I've never been able to do my duty by Maria," he gritted out. "That's why… Surely you knew?"

"I didn't, sir," Bush said. Blinded by his feelings for them both, he had simply done as he was bid and not asked why. Maria and Hornblower had always behaved as if they knew each other intimately; Bush would never have guessed that they were strangers to each other. But no, he had seen enough to know they could _not_ be strangers to each other — that was true, whatever the rest of it. Not for the first time, Bush wondered about their wedding night, and then he shook his head, giving up the exercise as useless.

"So I'm…?"

"To be a father, yes," Hornblower finished for him.

Bush had never thought on the possibility; marriage was out of the question on a lieutenant's salary, especially with four sisters already speaking for half of it. A child, Christ!

His feelings must have shown on his face, because Hornblower took Bush's glass from him and exchanged it for his own, still mostly full. Bush drained the second glass as quickly as the first.

"Publicly, the child will be mine," Hornblower said, "but privately, if you wish to be known to him, that can be arranged."

The child was unlikely to be a boy; Bush's family ran to girls. But that was of no account. "Perhaps it is best if the child believes there's nothing amiss, sir."

Hornblower nodded, but his shoulders hunched in on themselves.

"But perhaps I might… see him sometimes, sir? Or her?"

Hornblower seemed strangely relieved. "I should like nothing better. Maria is… very attached to you. It would disappoint her greatly if you were to become a stranger."

"Yes, sir," Bush said. That Maria was happy, Maria and her husband both, that was the important thing.

"Myself, as well," Hornblower added stiffly, not looking at him.

And by that awkward admission, Bush understood that Hornblower intended that their dinners ashore were to continue — their dinners ashore, and the irregular activities that followed. Christ knew how that would be possible with a baby in the house, but that was hardly his problem.

He wished his glass was not already empty.

"Yes, sir," Bush said again.

Hornblower threw Bush a look of such desperate gratitude that Bush blushed, embarrassed.

An uncomfortable moment passed.

"What now, sir?"

Hornblower looked at his desk, at the letters that lay there. "I write to Maria. Reassure her that we are overjoyed at the news."

Of course that was the proper thing that must be done. Bush hardly knew how he felt, and he dared not ask after Hornblower's feelings — although if Hornblower objected to raising another man's child, he could have always followed the simple expedient of not inviting another man into his bed — but Maria must not be allowed to worry. Bush stood, no longer feeling quite so off-balance.

"Would she— I don't mean to intrude, sir, but if it were welcome— Should I write as well?"

"I think that would make her very happy. You may use my pen and paper; I'll include your letter with mine."

Because of course the gunroom must not see Bush writing to his captain's wife, let alone whatever feelings he might commit to paper for her. Hornblower brought out quill and ink, and cautiously, Bush seated himself at Hornblower's desk. Bush hardly knew what to write; he desperately wished for the counsel of level-headed Anne.

Anne would laugh raucously, then scold him for putting his neck in the noose. Anne would be right, too.

But he could imagine no point at which he would have turned back. He feared less the prospect of fatherhood itself, however secret and dangerous to their careers, and more that with the advent of a child, the Hornblowers would soon discover themselves sufficient unto themselves.

Any sensible man in Bush's position would devoutly hope for just that. Anne would laugh at him indeed.

Not just the Hornblowers, now: his child. His and Maria's child — Maria, who showed Will such warmth and tenderness. He barely dared permit himself to think on that: Maria, his captain's wife, with his child.

"Just a few words will suffice," Hornblower said.

"Yes, sir," Bush said. It was impossible to write what he felt, here, with her husband looking on. Impossible, too, to know what would be welcome to her. Even the salutation seemed impossible: 'Mrs Hornblower' was far too formal for what lay between them, and yet 'Maria' was far too familiar for a communication that may be intercepted and publicised by the French. But it wouldn't be the salutation that damned them all, not given its contents: a personal letter to his captain's wife, to be included with his own to her, congratulating her on very personal news that should not have mattered to him at all — it was already damnably intimate.

But to hell with the French; it was Maria's feeling that mattered.

 _Dearest Maria,_ he wrote.


End file.
